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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Palm Canyon, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, and a Chance Meet-Up

Our friends John and Susan came by early to hike up Q mountain before we went on our group hike to Kofa, so I decided to join them. Wouldn’t you know as we were making our way back a woman with a dog was coming towards us on the trail. I thought the hat and the dog looked familiar, and as she approached I said “Nina?” Sure enough, it was Nina with dog Polly from Wheeling It. We had never met before, and had she not been wearing that cowboy hat I doubt I would have known who she was. We didn’t have much time but had a nice chat and even shared some boondocking information and thanked her for the Algodones dentist recommendation. Hope our paths cross again one day so we can spend more time talking.

From our campsite in La Posa West, it’s about 18 miles south on 95, then 7 miles east on a good dirt road into the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge to the Palm Canyon trailhead. It was a beautiful drive as we got closer to the Kofa Mountains, and we spotted lots of nice, level boondocking spots along the way.

The trail to the palms is about a half mile uphill, which takes you to a viewpoint only.

We could have missed seeing them tucked away in the rock if not for the sign. These are the only native fan palms in the state of Arizona.

Since it didn’t look like there was an easy way to get over to the grove, some of us decided to follow the faint trails combined with lots of rock scrambling, and continue on into the canyon. This is desert bighorn sheep territory, but I’m sure if there were any out there they heard our voices echo through the canyon and got far, far out of our way. After about another half mile or so we spotted a smaller grove of palms.

Intrepid Rod had to go see if he could get up there, and he did. Jim continued on into the canyon to see how far he could go, but I made him come back since he was carrying our lunch in his pack.

Can you spot Jim’s hat? This was not an easy place to hike.

But we loved the Kofa Mountains and will definitely go back again to do some other exploring in the area.

John, Susan, Laurelee, Ginny, Debbie, Gayle, with dogs Juna and Libby. Always feels good to finish a nice hike. David and Mary, along with Rod, were lagging behind taking lots more photos. Look forward to seeing them on David and Mary’s and Rod’s blogs, whenever they get around to posting them!

12 comments:

What a beautiful place. Those palms all hidden in there would have been a real surprise to me. I just love National Wildlife Refuges. Thanks for taking me along. Wish I could have met Nina and Polly though. :-)

Really!? A post already on the hike? You guys are animals. We were probably already sound asleep while you were industriously typing away. Have fun at the Mexican dentist today. No margaritas until after the appointment!